Various governments and/or governmental entities may perform filtering of network traffic such as traffic associated with the Internet. In some instances, traffic can be filtered using filtering mechanisms such as signatures, or the like. These signatures may include detection rules and/or other mechanisms that can provide various governmental entities with the ability to detect cyber-attacks in early stages of the attacks before damage to targeted systems occurs.
In some cases, however, the signatures may be confidential and therefore may not be revealed to entities outside of a particular sensitive compartmented information facility (“SCIF”) or other restricted environment such as a secure network, or the like. In particular, some signatures may be developed based upon years of covert operations and/or investigations domestically and/or abroad, and revealing contents of the signatures may jeopardize not only the various operations and/or investigations, but also may literally put lives at risk and/or subject sources of the information to retaliation, imprisonment, or even physical harm. Thus, the government often has signatures at its disposal that cannot be shared with commercial or other entities due to these and other concerns.
Because these signatures are not shared with private and/or commercial entities, many cyber-attacks that may be preventable with knowledge of the contents of the signatures may not be blocked. This can result in extensive damage to networks and/or systems that otherwise may be preventable.